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The senior doctor on board the Ruby Princess told a NSW Health employee that “we just have to stop all cruise ships” from as early as 8 March, a special inquiry has heard, amid evidence revealing a litany of errors and confusion surrounding the last voyage of the ship linked to 21 deaths and almost 700 cases of Covid-19.
The inquiry heard the ship was initially refused permission to dock by the NSW Port Authority, and an official from the Australian Border Force discussed “turning the ship around and sending it back to sea”, before both decisions were overturned.
It also emerged that NSW Health had been given an out-of-date log of sick passengers when it decided to let passengers disembark on 19 March before Covid-19 test results had returned.
Kelly-Anne Ressler, a NSW Health senior epidemiologist, said the testing regime on board the ship was “unsatisfactory” and revealed that, once on shore, test results were delayed because the laboratory forgot to process them as a priority.
A separate Senate inquiry into the ship also took place in Canberra on Tuesday.
The virus-hit cruise ship docked twice in Sydney in March – after it completed a journey on 8 March all passengers disembarked and 2,700 new passengers boarded that same day for a cruise to New Zealand, returning to Sydney on 19 March.
Ressler, who was not on the panel that allowed passengers to disembark, told the inquiry of a conversation with the ship’s doctor, Ilse von Watzdorf, on 8 March.
“It was a passing comment, she just said we have to stop all cruises,” Ressler said.
She and von Watzdorf began communicating over Whatsapp because they had technical difficulties using satellite phones, she said.
Counsel assisting, Richard Beasley SC, told the inquiry von Watzdorf sent Ressler a Whatsapp message on 8 March saying “thank you for your cooperation, hopefully they’ll [the passengers] behave this cruise ”, which included an“ emoji looking like an exasperated doctor ”. Ressler said it meant “hopefully they won’t become unwell”.
Beasley revealed that a person identifying themselves as from home affairs called the NSW port authority’s duty harbor master on 19 March, as did someone from the Australian Border Force.
The Border Force representative discussed “turning the ship around and sending it back to sea [but] shortly after, the same Australian Border Force officer rang the harbor master and may have said it could proceed. ”
At the Canberra hearing the Border Force commissioner, Michael Outram, confirmed an officer had been in touch with the harbor master.
He said the officer was “being helpful” by making some inquiries internally and then sharing the assessment the agency had from NSW Health that it was low risk for the ship to disembark its passengers.
“They didn’t tell the harbor master what he or she should or shouldn’t do. They’ve got no legislated authority to do that, ”Outram told the Senate’s Covid-19 committee.
“Because we’re called the border force, people think we’re omnipotent and that I have some miraculous legislative authority to direct states and territories and all sorts of organizations to do all sorts of things,” he said. “I don’t.”
In Sydney, Beasley also revealed that the ship’s log was out of date and the true number of people suffering influenza-like illnesses was “to a significant degree higher” than what was reported to NSW Health.
Earlier, the inquiry was told NSW Health had developed guidelines on 19 February, that if “a respiratory outbreak” affected 1% of a ship’s passengers, that could prompt it to be labeled medium- or high-risk.
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The Ruby Princess was assessed as low-risk, meaning passengers could disembark before the Covid-19 test results for other passengers had been returned.
The log given to NSW Health before docking said 2.7% of the people on board had presented with acute respiratory disease, and 0.94% had recorded influenza-like illness.
But when an updated log was provided to NSW Health on 20 May, those figures rose to more than 1% of passengers for both respiratory issues and influenza-like illness.
One person who tested positive for Covid-19 after disembarking was not listed on the ship’s log. After that was discovered, von Watzdorf sent through an updated log on 20 March that revealed more had been sick.
The inquiry heard from Ressler that it was “unsatisfactory” that more Covid-19 swabs were not taken on board. She told the inquiry people could be swabbed and tested for influenza and Covid-19 at the same time.
Documents submitted to the inquiry revealed the Ruby Princess said it only had 10 swabs available for Covid-19 before it docked on 19 March.
Commissioner Bret Walker asked Ressler why he “should not draw the conclusion that there has been a reprehensible shortcoming from NSW Health”.
In a tearful comment, Ressler said: “All I can say is that myself and my colleagues were working very hard, we did what we could, and if we could do it again it would be very different.”
Later in the day she revealed that the results of the Covid-19 swabs that were eventually taken were delayed because the laboratory forgot to put them into the system as a priority.
Beasley told the inquiry swabs were collected at 3am on 19 March and taken to a laboratory for testing. Usually, any swabs that arrived in the lab by 10am would have results back by 4pm. However, the swabs had not been processed by 4pm that day.
Ressler said she understood “the technician did not perform they were cruise ship samples, and they were put into the queue as per normal, and were not tested as priority”.
In Canberra, federal officials declined to commit to full cooperation with any future summons to appear before the NSW inquiry.
When Walker led the South Australian Murray Darling Basin royal commission, the commonwealth went to the high court to resist subpoenas to call federal public servants.
The secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Michael Pezzullo, said he expected the commonwealth’s position “wouldn’t change from issue to issue” as there were long-standing points of principle and jurisdiction, but he said his view was that “the better course ”would be to engage cooperatively.
The NSW special inquiry continues on Wednesday.
